I shook my head, knowing I would never again walk in terror of the Master-at-Arms. I would respect him more than ever after today, but having seen beneath the grim facade he wore habitually, I would never again fear him. “No, Magister,” I told him, and thanked him for his patience and forbearance that afternoon.
He nodded courteously and wished me well in Auxerre, after which he turned and rode away, making his way to the castle stables. I watched him until he rounded the edge of the curtain wall fronting the main gates, and I did not set eyes on him again for six more years.
III
FATHER GERMANUS
IT HAS BEEN a matter of astonishment to me throughout my adult life that, having spent no more than half a day in the company of Chulderic, King Ban’s Master-at-Arms, I can recall everything he said to me, practically verbatim, and yet when it comes to speaking of my great tutor and mentor Germanus, the renowned Bishop of Auxerre, I often find myself ready to gnash my teeth with fury and frustration because I can remember so little with any clarity. Certainly I can remember incidents, and when I push myself toward recalling those in detail I can sometimes remember the surrounding circumstances quite accurately, but overall I have no sense of any flow of time in those recollections, as though my years with the bishop comprised no more than a series of unconnected incidents. I am aware of a series of lacunae in my memory—holes and spaces and missing parts that prevent me from having any solid conviction of wholeness in my relationship with the saintly bishop.
Saintly is not an inappropriate word to use in describing Germanus of Auxerre, for before he ever came into my life, men and women were already speaking in awe of his sanctity, his holiness and goodness. It was public knowledge that early in his first years as Bishop of Auxerre he had cast out demons from a man who had stolen large amounts of money, and in the process of the exorcism had forced the demon to divulge the place where the hoard was concealed—these events had taken place openly and were witnessed by many people, and the results had been indisputable. Ever since that time, the bishop had been besieged by people seeking cures for illnesses and possession, and he had performed many miracles on behalf of his flock. I was not surprised, then, that within months of his death people had already begun speaking of him as Saint Germanus. Whether or not the bishop truly was a saint, however, I find myself unqualified to judge, precisely because it was Germanus himself who taught me never to presume to make moral judgments, since those were the sole property of God to make or unmake.
I am content to remember him as my mentor, my teacher, and my guide, and latterly my friend. I have never known a time when I did not have cause to be grateful for the example he set me, the lessons he taught me, and the principles he instilled in me. The man I grew to become could never have existed or behaved as he did had it not been for the direct influence of Germanus of Auxerre. And that conviction, that certitude that he shaped and molded me to be what I was and what I am today, is the major reason why I find it so galling that I can remember so little of our time together.
Germanus grew to be a constant in my life, the dominating force behind my mental and physical growth for the seven years that followed Chulderic’s single day of tuition and enlightenment, and as in the lives of all growing boys, the majority of the mundane events and ordinary, undistinguished times in those seven years have long since been forgotten, leaving only the high points and grand events to be remembered.
As King Ban had told me he would, Germanus arrived at our gates within the month, accompanied by a small retinue, and on the night of his arrival, before dinner, King Ban summoned me to his private quarters to meet my new guardian. As I made my way to the King’s chambers, I visualized some kind of wizened cleric, stooped with piety and learning, long-bearded and wearing a high, pointed hat. It was only long months later that I realized I had been visualizing a sorcerer, the image dredged up from some half-forgotten memory of someone else’s story told over a fire on a winter’s night. The reality was radically different
“Aha, there you are. Over here, if you please.” The Lady Vivienne had just emerged from her own chamber as I entered the long suite of rooms she shared with the King, and I changed direction slightly in response to her summons, smiling and holding out my hands for the inspection I knew was coming. Smiling gently back at me, she took my hands in her own and held me out and away from her at arms’ length as she examined my appearance. Then she turned my hands over and inspected my palms before turning them back and peering closely at my fingernails, after which she released my hands and reached out to hook one finger into the front of my tunic and pull me toward her as she leaned forward to sniff at me, wrinkling her nose delicately as she did so. Then, when she had satisfied herself that I had bathed that day and was fit to present to an important guest, she nodded and ruffled my hair fondly. “You look remarkably fine, young man, clean and respectable. Are you ready to meet Bishop Germanus?”
I nodded, feeling my heart beating hard with excitement in anticipation of meeting the great man, but smiling back at her still, aware as I always was in those days of the change that had taken place in our attitudes, each to the other, since the acknowledgment that we were not mother and son, but aunt and nephew. Somehow, and quite inexplicably as far as I was concerned—and very surprisingly, too, looking back on it nowadays, since I was only ten years old at the time and demonstrating a very mature self-awareness for my age—our relationship had changed for the better within a matter of days of that admission. We had always been close and affectionate with each other in the past, but now that our true relationship had been revealed and accepted, each of us had altered our treatment and our awareness of the other very slightly and indefinably, offering and demonstrating a degree of friendliness—I could think of no other word to define it better—that had not been there in former days. The first few days after my unexpected epiphany had been painful for both of us, with neither one of us knowing what the other was thinking or expecting, and throughout those days, each time I met her, the Lady Vivienne’s eyes had been red and swollen from weeping, as, to tell the truth, had been my own. But that time had passed swiftly enough, and at the end of it she and I felt possibly more comfortable with each other than we ever had before. Once she saw that I had not grown to hate her for her necessary deceit, my aunt—although as forewarned I continued to call her Mother—had become more open and more demonstrative in her concerns for me, and in return I had taken pains to let her be aware of my unaltered love for her. Now, as these thoughts flitted through my mind, she caught a trace of them somehow and frowned at me, her face betraying slight perplexity.
“What’s wrong, Clothar? You’re not afraid, are you? Of meeting him?”
I shook my head immediately. “No, Mother, not at all. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I heard about him.”
“Then what were you thinking a moment ago? You looked almost … distressed.”
“No,” I said and again shook my head in an emphatic negative. “Truly. I was merely thinking about all that has happened recently, but I’m not distressed at all. Can we go in now?”
She reached out and stroked my cheek gently with the back of her fingers, her eyes narrowing as she gazed intently into mine, and then she, too, nodded and tapped my cheek twice, very softly and tenderly, before crooking her finger in a sign for me to follow her as she turned away and walked ahead of me, leading me into the room where King Ban sat talking with Bishop Germanus. I followed her wordlessly, my nostrils still pleasantly aware of the perfume I had picked up from her when she leaned forward to sniff at me.